Noun
a town overrun by roughnecks
a group of roughnecks like to hang out at the roadhouse and harass people Adjective
their roughneck antics were amusing only if you were as drunk as they were
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
The suave Powell adds just the right touch of roughneck to make Gatsby ever more the outsider.—Bob Verini, Variety, 14 June 2024 Born in Clinton, Okla., and raised in Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, Keith worked as a roughneck in the oil fields, then played as a semiprofessional football player before kicking off his music career.—Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News, 6 Feb. 2024 Elena, easily influenced, takes a shine to the handsome roughneck.—Esther Zuckerman, Washington Post, 29 Feb. 2024 And along those highways came the farmers and Okies and oil rig roughnecks who would forever shape the culture and landscape of the San Joaquin Valley.—Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2024 Long road to stardom Keith worked as a roughneck in the oil fields of Oklahoma as a young man, then played semi-pro football before launching his career as a singer.—CBS News, 6 Feb. 2024 Keith worked as a roughneck in the oil fields of Oklahoma as a young man, then played semi-pro football before launching his career as a singer.—Kristin M. Hall, Fortune, 6 Feb. 2024 The youth culture in evidence in his early novels is distinctly Texan and rural (and white): Cadillacs and roughnecks, Hank Williams songs on the jukebox at the pool hall, aimless drives down empty streets.—Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023 Hanna’s immediate suspicions may resonate with one viewer, while another, like Liv, might want to give the roughnecks the benefit of the doubt.—Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 2 Oct. 2023
Adjective
That sequence feels like it might have been made by one of those roughneck filmmakers in the early days of Hollywood, just hauling a lot of equipment and stuntmen out to the desert and risking their lives to make some crazed, truly dangerous action set piece.—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 22 May 2024 Trey Smoak’s roughneck monitor lizard was out of his sight for about 10 minutes Friday when the Crowley resident went to put up groceries.—Harriet Ramos, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 11 Feb. 2024 In reporting trips over miles and miles of Texas, to borrow a phrase from a classic song, The Times found a broad range of Texans, settling in a few representative places — a North Texas suburb, the roughneck hub of Odessa and the heart of Houston — to tell the story of a state in rapid transition.—Robert Gebeloff, New York Times, 13 Nov. 2023 Overwatch’s latest short focused on McCree, the game’s popular, roughneck cowboy character.—Julia Alexander, The Verge, 2 Nov. 2018
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'roughneck.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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